Buried Evidence (18 page)

“Yes,” she said. “What did you find at the house?”

“We didn’t spot any signs of a break-in,” he said. “There’s
always the possibility that you might have surprised an intruder. When you return, check to see if any of your property is missing.”

“It’s my daughter’s residence,” Lily said, placing one foot inside the car. “Thanks, officer.”

“Ah…Mrs. Forrester,” Stafford said, holding onto the door. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to take your daughter down to the police station. You can come along if you wish, but since she’s an adult, you don’t have to be present for us to interrogate her.”

Lily was aghast. The word
interrogate
resounded in her ears. “What is this about, officer? My daughter hasn’t committed a crime.”

“No one said she did, ma’am.” Officer Stafford glanced over the top of the patrol car. His female partner asked to see Shana’s driver’s license, wanting to verify they had the right individual. Shana retrieved her wallet out of her backpack, removed her license, then looked anxiously toward her mother. “John Forrester was arrested last night for vehicular homicide in front of the address we just cleared,” the officer continued. “The car involved in the accident was registered in the name of Shana Forrester.”

“This woman says I have to go with her,” Shana cried, pressing her body against the car. “I don’t understand. Are they going to arrest me? God… this can’t be happening. Why would they think I killed that person?”

“Don’t panic,” Lily said, rushing to her side. “They only want to ask you some questions. No one is going to arrest you or hurt you.”

Stafford joined them. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow morning?” Lily asked him, holding Shana around the waist. “I just told her about her father’s arrest, so you can imagine how stressful this has been. I promise I’ll bring her down first thing in the morning. All you have to do is give me the address.”

“I’m not the investigating officer,” Stafford explained, taking in the dark circles under Lily’s eyes and the panicked look on her daughter’s face. “I can do a check with dispatch and see if they can track down the detectives who issued the bulletin for you, see what they say.”

“I’d really appreciate it,” Lily said. “It’s almost ten o’clock. Both of us are exhausted.”

Stafford returned to his unit, using his portable phone to bypass central dispatch and contact the investigative bureau. After being advised that the detectives had left for the day, he asked to be patched through to Hope Carruthers at her residence.

“You have both Lily and Shana Forrester?” Carruthers asked, turning off the television set in her apartment.

“Yeah,” Stafford said, squinting at the two bedraggled women though the windshield. “They look like they’ve been through the wringer, to tell you the truth. Are you certain you want us to bring the girl in tonight? Isn’t she only wanted for questioning? Her mother swears she’ll bring her in tomorrow.”

“No can do,” Carruthers said, knowing how adamant Osborne had been about questioning Shana Forrester. Lily being present was an unexpected bonus. “Bring them to the Burbank station ASAP. I’m walking out the door right now.”

“What about their car?”

“Let the mother drive,” the detective told him, picking up her gun and badge off the coffee table. “Stay on their tail, though, Stafford. There’s more going on here than you could ever imagine.”

H
enry Middleton walked into the master bedroom of his six-thousand-square-foot home in the foothills above Montecito. His wife, Carolyn, was sprawled out on the four-poster bed still dressed in her clothes. “You squandered over five hundred bucks on that cashmere sweater,” he told her. “Sleeping in it seems ridiculous, particularly since we’re on the verge of losing everything we have.”

Without looking at him, she flopped over onto her side. “I didn’t get home from the hospital until almost six. Maggie quit, so I had to rush back out and get the kids something to eat. I’m too exhausted to move, let alone take my clothes off.”

Middleton kicked his shoe halfway across the room. “I spent last night in a frigging jail cell and you’re tired because you had to visit your dying daughter? Give me a break, Carolyn.”

“Shut up, Henry,” Carolyn snapped. “Betsy had another seizure. Not only that, that lady district attorney showed up at the hospital and started pumping me for information.”

Henry’s jaw went slack. “At the hospital? Lily Forrester was at the hospital?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Carolyn glowered at her husband. “Did one night in jail cause you to lose your hearing?”

Henry dropped down on the bed beside her, his face twisted in concern. “What did Forrester ask you? Good Lord, my entire future is on the line. I told you not to speak to anyone unless my attorney was present.”

With the heel of one foot, Carolyn pushed on his side until he had no choice but to return to a standing position. “I didn’t tell her anything,” she said. “Quit acting like a baby, Henry. You know they’ll never convict you. They don’t have enough evidence.” She reached over and picked up a bottle off the nightstand,
poured several pills into the palm of her hand, then washed them down with a glass of wine.

Her husband wrestled the bottle away from her, squinting as he read the label on the prescription. “This is Betsy’s seizure medication. Why in God’s name are you taking her pills?”

“Why not?” Carolyn said, a dull look on her face. “I’ve been taking them for months. In case you haven’t noticed, my nerves are wrecked and my back is killing me from sitting in that awful metal chair all day.”

“Why don’t you ask them to bring in another chair?” he said, running his fingers through his hair.

“The place is run by nuns, dickhead,” she barked. “There’s not a comfortable chair in the entire place. Even the hospital equipment looks like it’s a thousand years old.”

“That’s still not a reason to take Betsy’s pills.”

“They’re muscle relaxers,” she told him, gulping down the rest of the wine, then slapping the glass back down on the end table. “They help me to relax. The booze doesn’t cut it anymore, even the strong stuff.”

Henry paced back and forth in front of the bed, the pill bottle locked in his hand. “You’re an idiot,” he said. “You could overdose. I’m not a doctor, but I’m certain you shouldn’t mix this type of medication with alcohol. If anything happens to you, the police will accuse me of trying to kill you as well as Betsy.”

Carolyn’s lips curled into a smile. “Maybe I will overdose.”

“Why would you even say something like that?” Henry asked. “Haven’t I been through enough? Do you want them to kill me?”

Carolyn sat up in the bed, a petulant look on her face. “I thought everything would be over by now.”

“This is only the beginning,” her husband told her, still attempting to absorb the enormity of the situation. “There’s the preliminary hearing, selecting a jury, then the trial itself. According to what Fowler told me, we could be looking at a year, even longer.”

“I wasn’t talking about the trial,” Carolyn said, glancing at a chip in her dark red fingernail polish. “I can’t spend every day
of my life at the hospital. You insist that I keep going so everyone will see what a devoted mother I am. Why should I have to prove myself? Betsy’s a vegetable now.”

Henry Middleton lunged at her, seizing her by the shoulders. “She’s your daughter, for chrissakes.”

“Get your hands off me,” she snarled, throwing her arms out to break his grip. “We agreed to turn off the respirator. I was looking forward to taking a vacation, putting this behind us. Now I’m stuck here. I can’t even go to the country club.”

Henry was speechless. Had he really married this woman, had children with her, sworn undying love to her? Was it the pills and alcohol talking, or had she always been this way and he’d been too blind to notice?

“The kids are having trouble at school,” she continued, placing another pillow behind her back. “Cathy came home crying yesterday. Jacob stays in his room all the time with the door closed. He doesn’t even have his friends over anymore.”

“At least you’re not on trial for attempted murder,” her husband told her. He was more than aware of the problems his children were encountering. It broke his heart, but for the moment there was little he could do to rectify the situation. “You know why we can’t have Betsy removed from life support, Carolyn. I’d be facing life in prison or the death penalty.”

Carolyn Middleton climbed off the bed, pointing her finger at him. “I’ve been in prison since the day that child was born. Don’t forget that, Henry. You spent all your time at the business, building your empire, making yourself feel important.”

“I was only trying to make a living,” Henry said. “I did it for you, Carolyn. I did it for the children. You wanted them to go to the finest schools. You wanted this expensive house. We’ve always had help. You make it sound like you took care of Betsy single-handed.”

“We don’t have help now,” she said. “No one wants to work in a house where someone is on trial for attempted murder, where every time they walk out the door, they have to worry that they’ll be assaulted by a reporter. Find a way to make it go away, Henry.”

He slumped into a chair, burying his head in his hands. A few moments later, he peered up at her. “How? Tell me how I can possibly make this go away. It’s too late, don’t you see? We have to ride it out, pray that you’re right and they don’t have the enough evidence to convict me. Fowler thinks the D.A.’s office may have only filed to save face in the community.”

Carolyn gave him an icy stare. “You’re good at solving problems, Henry. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me? Haven’t you always bragged that you can fix anything? Find a way. If you don’t, I will.”

B
Y NINE-THIRTY
that evening, Dr. Christopher Logan’s impeccable appearance had wilted. Starting his day at four o’clock that morning, he had lost two patients in one day, both of them under the age of seven. His face was covered with day-old stubble, his white coat stained and wrinkled, his dark hair sticking up on top of his head. When he became overly tired, his speech became almost indecipherable. “I’m sorry,” Sister Mary Luke said, leaning over the nursing counter at Saint Francis Hospital. “What chart did you ask for?”

“Middleton,” he muttered. “Betsy Middleton.”

Sister Mary Luke appeared to be in her early forties, but having worked with nuns for a number of years, the doctor had long since stopped speculating when it came to age. Her face was round, her eyes clear, her skin unlined, her eyes a translucent shade of gray. “I checked on Betsy thirty minutes ago when we made our eleven o’clock rounds,” she told him. “Why don’t you go home, Dr. Logan? You’ve had a trying day.”

“I thought I’d just look in on her.”

“Her time is coming soon, isn’t it?”

“With or without the respirator,” the doctor said, quickly scanning the girl’s chart. “Is it the seizures?”

Logan flipped the metal file closed, the metallic ting echoing in the tiled corridor. “Seizures are inherent with patients who suffer from Aicardi syndrome,” he explained. “The strychnine
caused them to become more violent. Her body isn’t strong enough.”

The sister’s voice was soft, consoling. “Perhaps God is calling her home.”

“If God wanted to call someone home,” Logan said bitterly, “why didn’t he call the bastard who poisoned her?”

Instead of blistering at his use of profanity, her voice took on an even lighter tone. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

Logan headed down the corridor, slipped into the darkened hospital room, and stood quietly beside Betsy Middleton’s crib. After two years in the seminary, he had quit and entered medical school, believing he could serve God better saving lives than souls. After four years as a physician, however, he knew his faith was once again being tested. Signing a death certificate for a child who had only briefly tasted life left a wound so deep that it took months to heal. Lately, he found it almost impossible to worship a creator who allowed innocent children to suffer. In the beginning he had carried his pain to the altar. For a while his prayers and his belief in a higher power had provided him with the strength and acceptance to carry on. Similar to ingesting too many antibiotics, he had built up an immunity to the stock answers like Sister Mary Luke had just made. The Lord might work in mysterious ways, he told himself, but human beings performed untold evils. From his perspective, the Lord wasn’t doing enough to stop them. It was bad enough to see a child die from illness. To watch them waste away due to an intentional act committed by the person who parented them was beyond comprehension.

He walked over and placed his hand on the respirator that kept Betsy Middleton alive, looking down at her gaunt face, her gaping mouth, her unseeing eyes. Several places on her body were badly bruised from today’s seizure. A few months back the convulsions had been so severe and her bones so brittle, she had suffered hairline fractures in both her left arm and ankle. He had to resist the urge to scoop her up in his arms and carry her out of the hospital, maybe take her home and rock her in his arms until the sun came up and her body became still and silent, her soul finally released from its dark prison.

He didn’t know Henry Middleton that well, certainly not enough to classify him as a killer. Before his arrest Betsy’s father had visited her several times a week during the evening hours. On the occasions when he had spoken to him regarding her condition, the man had merely nodded and listened. But Carolyn was different. Even though she came to the hospital almost every day, there was something about her that disturbed him. She went through the motions, but he didn’t get the sense that she was a genuinely compassionate person. He had seen this type of detachment with other parents, though, even among other members of the medical profession. When people were faced with an ongoing problem, they sometimes had to suppress their emotions in order to perform their duties as caretakers. Carolyn’s demeanor was more along the lines of restless indifference, almost as if she was eager to wash her hands of anything related to her daughter.